Me-Zine Journalism for Fun and (Sometimes) Profit

By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

Published: July 9, 2001

Mickey Kaus, a former reporter for Newsweek, works out of his home off the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., looking at a blue sliver of ocean, drawing in the balmy beach air, his usual work attire a mismatched, rumpled sweatsuit.

He writes his column between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., for his three- year-old Web site, Kausfiles, a hodgepodge of his political opinions, rants from his readers, media critiques and links to other sites.

But the best part, Mr. Kaus says, is that in the six-month period through June his Web site has, unexpectedly, become profitable. Mr. Kaus said that after his expenses ($2,346), and considering his income ($1,000) from his one advertiser, Contentville, along with donations from readers, he has made a profit of $318.60.

"So call me a mogul," he said.

Mr. Kaus is just one participant in a growing journalism format now known as the "me-zine," electronic magazines that feature the opinions of one man or one woman, writing alone, often late at night and often wearing pajamas, and indulging in the opinionated wordplay they all went into print journalism for and now find is much more fun — and sometimes profitable, however slightly — on the Internet.

The me-zine has been around in various formats since the Internet became popular; Matt Drudge's Drudge Report, drudgereport.com, went online in 1996, with no initial thought, Mr. Drudge said last week, to make money. Now Mr. Drudge has four advertising agencies selling space on his Web site.

More than ever, writers are choosing the electronic me-zine as their bully pulpit rather than, or in addition to, a column in the local newspaper or political magazine.

Two months ago, Slate magazine inaugurated a me-zine site, which links readers to andrewsullivan.com, j-marshall.com/talk, kausfiles.com and vpostrel.com, where columnists air their opinions on popular culture, politics and practically every other subject.

Sometimes they take pride in what they do not write. "For a number of reasons, I've tried to make these virtual pages a Condit/Chandra-free zone," said Joshua Micah Marshall, writer of the j-marshall.com/talk site, although the Web site commented over the weekend about the news media's coverage.

Virginia Postrel, a libertarian who writes the vpostrel.com site and a contributor to the Economic Scene column in The New York Times ( news/quote ), said that she started the site in 1998 to promote her book "The Future and Its Enemies." But she said that she started making money only in the last year when she introduced a tip box, through which readers donate cash in an arrangement with Amazon.com ( news/quote ). She has received about $1,200 in tips since February, she said.

"I think this enterprise is about self-expression," she said. "The money is an added benefit."

Visits to most of the sites are not measured by outside agencies. Andrew Sullivan, an editor at The New Republic and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, said that since he introduced his site last year, the number of individual users visiting the site at least once had risen to 180,000 last month from 30,000, according to what he described as unsophisticated tracking software.

Rather than depending on advertisers, Mr. Sullivan depends on his tip box and sponsors. The site has raised more than $25,000 in donations since October — $8,000 from the Amazon tip box since March — he said, and has just signed its first corporate sponsor, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association.

"So far it has been pro bono, but eventually I would like to have a salary," Mr. Sullivan said, adding that the journalistic freedom of the site is its most attractive feature.

"You get to write things and you don't have to put all the substantiation you'd put in a print article in a little online posting," he said.

Mr. Sullivan said that freedom also comes with peril — the ability to make mistakes, easily and often. "It is a little scary because you have no filters," he said. "If you make a mistake you must correct yourself at once or else you will alienate your readers."

And while the sites monitor themselves and it is difficult to get concrete statistics about the size of the audience, some authors do believe that the me-zine is a good format in which to advertise their books and to tap an audience as a reporting resource. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of "The Tipping Point" and a contributor to The New Yorker, makes his published work available on malcolmgladwell.com and provides links to buy his book. Last year, Edward Jay Epstein, the author of "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer" and "News from Nowhere," introduced his site, edwardjayepstein.com. He is researching a book about the business of Hollywood and occasionally gets a news tip from a reader that is worth reporting further.

There are technical drawbacks to popularity. Mr. Epstein's Web site started out as a link through Slate, but he withdrew from Slate when he started getting too many viewers.